By Talihina Highway

With U. S. colleges opening in a month or so, many & many a student is counting his dollars, casting up his college budget. In nearly every institution he may apply for a loan, earn part or all of his living expenses. In inland districts there are colleges which will accept farm produce for tuition. If a student is unemployed but properly qualified he may take free courses at places like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Washington University (St. Louis) or Lawrence College (Appleton, Wis.). Many another college, like the University of Missouri last week and the University of Iowa three weeks ago, calculates that expenses will be lower by 15% and 20% this year.

There is a considerable body of young people who are not only unable to go to college but are also jobless. To these went last week an invitation from Commonwealth College (Mena, Ark.), militant labor institution. Chief point: tuition at Commonwealth for nine months costs $120, less per month than the cost of living at home. There are no other expenses. Said Lucien Koch, Commonwealth's director: "Young people to whom the Depression is a reality, who have lost their jobs and are not sure where the next meal is coming from, are the ones most likely to succeed in their class work at Commonwealth. They want to know why we have a depression and what can be done about it."

Commonwealth College was founded in 1923. on a 320-acre plot near the Talihina Highway in the Ouachita Mountains. The founders were Dr. William Edward Zeuch (pronounced Zoyk) of the University of Illinois, and Mrs. Kate Richards O'Hare, Labor lecturer, onetime (1912-14) international secretary of the Socialist Party of America. Mrs. O'Hare was once kissed by Anatole France when she appeared before an international Socialist gathering. A pacifist, she was imprisoned for 14 months during the War under the Espionage Act. In founding Commonwealth College. Dr. Zeuch and Mrs. O'Hare espoused no one dogma. Their "Commoners" might be Laborites, Liberals, Communists. Socialists, Single Taxers, anything they chose so long as they would work for their keep.

Commoners now work four hours a day five days a week, scrubbing, carpentering, washing dishes, farming. The College is largely selfsupporting. Commoners take courses in subjects pertaining chiefly to labor: economics, history, labor journalism, labor drama, labor education. Any intelligent person interested in workers may enter, take two years of preparatory, three years of college work. Last year there were 44 students; next autumn 55 are expected. Commonwealth has no commencements, degrees, examinations or roll-calls. Instructors--who include William Cunningham, onetime reporter on the New Orleans Times-Picayune; Arkansas Lawyer Clay Fulks; B. J. Ostrow. one-time cinema critic for the Union City (N. J.) Hudson Dispatch; and Marion Hille. onetime New York show girl--receive no pay, work along with the students.

In 1928 Dr. Zeuch, then 36, announced that he wished to retire as Director Emeritus, go to Europe as a Guggenheim Scholar, turn over his post to a younger man. Last summer Commonwealth got a new head, youngest college executive in the U. S. He was Lucien Koch, 24, who had been brought up on an Oregon farm, worked his way through high school as a printer's devil, studied at Commonwealth from 1924 to 1929. Director Koch studied economics at the University of Wisconsin, became an instructor in Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn's Experimental College. Blond, square-faced, heavyset, he is foreman of the college carpentry crew. He likes to shout labor speeches, sing labor songs, play Beethoven on Commonwealth's portable phonograph. Last spring Director Koch took four commoners to Kentucky's Harlan and Bell Counties to distribute food & clothing, make speeches on the Bill of Rights. They were beaten, ejected.

Commoners (male & female) wear corduroys and overalls, live a communal life which in leisure hours includes swimming in Mill Creek, dancing, group singing, tennis, volley ball and taking siestas under the trees. The Commonwealth College Fortnightly tells of their activities. Excerpts:

"Chucky Moskowitz and Bella Englestein hitchhiked to Fort Smith for a week-end recently. Bella was in need of new glasses so she and Chucky made a lark of this necessity. They had a fine trip. . . ."

"Goober Butter. For some weeks students were at work harvesting and cleaning goobers. A few bushels were hauled into town for hulling. Then Zeuch, Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Bosch roasted, ground and mixed. There is about 150 pounds of goober butter now stored in the cellar and being served regularly at mealtime."

Mergers Urged

In the past three years nearly 40 reorganizations have taken place among U. S. colleges and universities. Many a pedagog makes moan, but last week it was pointed out by the Association of American Colleges that this readjustment is "the integration of the American college. . . . Duplication of effort is being reduced, and systems of colleges are being organized. While taking toll of weakness, the depression has at the same time tended to conserve and enhance strength wherever found." Hence, mergers, consolidations and closures have in the main been justified.

The Association of American Colleges speaks with authority, for it represents 457 colleges and universities, serving them when they are bothered with problems of administration, finance, architecture, athletics, curriculum, scholarships, enlistment and training of teachers. Founded in 1915, its function was at first simply to hold yearly meetings at which Christian education and the problems of the liberal college were discussed. But the colleges needed more than that. In 1929 the A. A. C. expanded its services, doubled its fee to $50 a year, hired as associate secretary, surveyor and researcher tall, broad-shouldered Archie Maclnness Palmer, 36, author of the merger recommendation which is to appear in the November bulletin. Busy Secretary Palmer, onetime secretary and acting dean of Cornell University, onetime sales researcher for Procter & Gamble Co.. onetime alumni secretary at Columbia University, is currently preparing, with Dartmouth Architect Jens Fredrick Larson, a work on "The Architectural Development of the American College."

Some facts about college reorganizations :

P: Startlingly high was the mortality rate of 516 U. S. institutions founded before the Civil War; up to 1928, 81% of them had closed, ranging from 48% in Pennsylvania to 100% in Florida and Arkansas.*

P: Many recent consolidations have involved denominational colleges, mostly in the South and Middle West, in a college system of one strong central institution and one or more affiliated junior colleges.

P:Eliminating duplication, improving business administration, centralizing control, state-supported institutions have been merged, or are in process of merging, in North Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Oregon.

P:Reorganized as junior colleges: Anderson (Anderson. S. C.). Rio Grande (Rio Grande, Ohio). Elmhurst (Elmhurst, Ill.), Lincoln (Lincoln, Ill.), St. Bernard (St. Bernard, Ala.), Northwest Nazarene (Nampa, Idaho), Ellsworth (Iowa Falls, Iowa), Wartburg (Clinton, Iowa), Belmont Abbey (Belmont, N. C.).

P:For lack of funds, three pre-Civil War colleges have been closed in the past three years: Lombard (Galesburg, Ill), Irving (Mechanicsburg, Pa.), St. Mary's (St. Marys, Kans.).

*From THE FOUNDING OF AMERICAN COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR --Donald G. Tewksbun--Columbia University Bureau of Publications.

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